Beyond the Pale: a Novel Interview with 2005 National Novel Writing Month Entry, Pale

Welcome to the first installment of A Novel Interview. In this program, we will explore the world of literary madness by interviewing the various novels I've written or attempted to write. I use the word "literary" quite loosely here. Literature, to define the term, really can be anything from the warning labels on your medications to Shakespeare to Dostoevsky to King and back to those warning labels. Literature, still playing fast and loose with the definition, is anything that attempts to communicate through a medium of written language. Again, I use the term "language" quite loosely, and I'll leave it up to you to define the word. I would really hate to waste all my time on definitions here.

In this edition of A Novel Interview, I sit down and chat with Pale, my entry into this year's National Novel Writing Month. Every year for four years now, I've participated in this competition, and every year has been declared a winner by reaching 50,000 words (or more) in 30 days (or less). This year, it looks as if I'll reach the mark in record time, but like last year, I most likely won't finish the story by the end of November. As Pale closes in on the mark, I invited it to sit down with me and talk a little bit about exactly what the fuck it's up to.

Me: First of all, Pale, thank you for taking time out of our hectic schedule to join me. It's tough work becoming a novel in such a short period of time, and most people wouldn't even call the word count goal a novel. What do you say to that?

Pale: Thanks for having me. As for the word count thing, well, some people don't really get what NaNoWriMo is all about. It's not about writing novels at all. It's about attaining goals that you thought were unattainable. It's about dedicating yourself to something that you've always wanted to do but were afraid you never had the time. The word count goal would qualify most of us as novellas, but people automatically associate the word novel with something of much greater depth and challenge. I think calling us novels is appropriate. The challenge alone warrants the label.

Me: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Pale: Well. I'm pretty old as far as ideas go. I've been kicking around for a good eight or nine years, and I was even at one point complete. But those twenty five pages or so barely scatched the surface of what I was about. At my core, I am the story of a rock star with a troubled soul seeking peace. There's a great deal more going on here than that, though. There are relationships. There are monsters. There's a very tricky sort of overarching idea that may or may not be working for me at the moment. It keeps mutating, and I think I like where it stands right now. Getting it to work is going to be tough, and it came so late that it would require some serious editing to carry it through the whole work. Right now, it appears for the first time in a chapter called Voices which is some 20,000 words in.

Me: Do you find that that makes things difficult for you? How do you keep going when you know that the "story" isn't really in place?

Pale: [laughs] It's NaNo! It's not at all difficult to plow on without a plot. The point is to get down to the act of writing. Ideas that only sit around in someone's head or get scratched down in a notebook will never be novels. Not even crappy ones. Writing requires writing. Editing, now that's a different story.

Me: What are some of your favorite parts so far and what do you feel is missing?

Pale: Characters are always my favorite. These people all have interesting stories to tell, and their voices are all so clear. It's tough sometimes to pick and choose which strings to follow. I'm trying to limit myself to Casidhe, Ethan and Honor, but I can't ignore the pirates, Sarah, Daniel, Jason and a handful of others. I love them all. I'd give each of them 50k words of story if I could. I think I dropped the ball pretty early on the whole thing. Early on, there's not much to move the plot. That's because I'm not an action packed epic like Seven Breaths or a fun little sci-fi romp like Shaman. I'd like to do some more complete research on autism because I think I could do a better job with Honor in that regard, but time ran out before November. I'd also like to establish the weird little undercurrent plot a whole lot earlier. But that was that late bathtub epiphany. There wasn't much I could do about it.

Me: Can you tell me a little more about this undercurrent plot you keep refering to?

Pale: Dude, you're the author. No spoliers.

Me: No hints at all?

Pale: Okay. I'll just say that a throw away line of dialogue sparked an idea inspired by -- okay directly ripped off from -- one of the two or three episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer I can say I really enjoyed. The one where Buffy's in a mental hospital and you never really know if the slayer bits are real or some delusion. Like I said, my concept has mutated a bit. The focus in the undercurrent is Ethan rather than Casidhe and sometimes Honor. I'll only say that at this point, I know that something really really awful happened between Ethan and Casidhe, and Ethan's coping mechanism is a bit broken.

Me: During NaNoWriMo, many participants resort to padding techniques such as limiting their use of contracts, adding dream sequences, writing in dares from various dare threads on the forums and so on. Do you use padding techniques at all, and if so, what do you do?

Pale: Hmm. I don't know. I think dialogue can be seen as a padding technique in a sense. It's easier for me to write conversations than it is to write narrative passages. I find myself cringing every time I read a paragraph that describes actions because they're so stilted sometimes. [reads] "He turned around to face the creature. He lit a cigarette. He walked into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle." That kind thing. It's because my writer has a limited vocabulary and prefers simple words anyway. But dialogue. Yeah, that can pad a word count. I did some word wars with eleven and pseudomuffin at the write in Sunday and kicked their asses because I was doing dialogue.

Me: You're very close to reaching the word count goal.

Pale: Oh yes. So close I can taste it.

Me: But do you think the story will wrap up by the end of the month?

Pale: I don't know. You know, I was orginally conceived in two parts. The first part was ... is, I should say ... about everything that leads up to Casidhe's mysterious disappearance. The second part would have been Ethan, Honor, Daniel and Jason trying to find Casidhe. I'm not feeling this second part too much. First, Jason has unfortunately become too much of a peripheral character for me to include her in the search. And given certain other circumstances, Daniel probably isn't going to want to help out. I could just have Ethan and Honor, but honestly, there's not much to it anyway. What I'd like to do now is have the undercurrent plot resolve first and then have some kind of conclusion where Ethan and Honor find Casidhe and they all figure out what's really going on. So, it's possible I'll be able to finish. The important thing will be not to lag once I hit 50k. I'm taking Saturday off, no doubt about that, but from the 20th to the 30th, I'll need to work it.

Me: There weren't a lot of notes written regarding your plot before hand. Has this hurt or helped?

Pale: I think it hurt a little.

Me: Why?

Pale: I needed more direction than I had, and starting off that way was rough. I mean, it was fine for Shaman to have no clue. Shaman had a very clear starting point and a very clear ending. It also benefitted from being the very first of your NaNo attempts. There was a thrill to it that wasn't present the following year. On the other hand, too much planning is a bad thing. Just ask Seven Breaths.

Me: Do you think you're any good?

Pale: Hell no. I think I suck, and I'm totally okay with that. The beautiful thing about it is that I don't ever have to be seen by anyone unless I really want to. I think that once I finally get this story told, I'll be done with all the characters, and I'll have no real need to revisit them, much less inflict them on anyone else.

Me: So you have no plans to edit?

Pale: No way. Once I'm done, I'm done. I'm happy just to have been written. Who knows? Maybe I'll change my mind when I get to the end. At 46,437 words, I feel I'm just now hitting a good stride. I've stopped throwing around so many sentence fragments. I've been cognizant of certain plot points. And even though I'm crap, I'm having fun. And you know, Seven Breaths was convinced it was crap, too, and I'm willing to bet it's not. None of us are beautiful at first.

Me: Do you think your age has anything to do with it?

Pale: Oh sure. Ageism hurts ideas all the time. You have this wonderful thing in your head, and nothing you ever put down on paper will be that good.

Me: How do you combat that?

Pale: NaNoWriMo. That's why I'm here.

Me: Pale, it's been a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you for your time and good luck with the rest of the month.

Pale: Thank you!

And so concludes my interview with Pale. You can read an excerpt from the first chapter here. Next time on A Novel Interview, I'll chat with Once, the bubbly tale of Native American trickster/creator god Raven and Armageddon. Stay tuned!

Why I Hate My Novel

I hate my NaNoWriMo novel this year. I think it's because I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing. Oh, sure I've tossed out 40,274 words in thirteen days. Tweleve really, because I skipped one day. The plot seems to be moving on. I even had one of those bathtub epiphanies that I sometimes get where I'm just lying around in the bathtub and I suddenly realize what my novel is really all about. I'm not sure I'm pulling it off right, though. That's okay. I don't care. I have every intention of getting through this story somehow. I just don't think I like it. I think it's that I've told this story so many times in my head, in all the gazillion drafts of it I've been trying for eight years now. The only fresh thing is the one character who I decided was autistic and wasn't before. His previous iteration was uninteresting. As he is now, he's surprised me. I do worry thought that I'm not doing the autism right. Doesn't matter. It needs more research, and I can't do that now. I also hate that the damn thing sucks me in the way it does. I was reading over some of it after the write in today, and I don't think the writing is really all that bad. There are some parts where I'm wondering what I'm thinking, but it seems the highly fragmented style works where I'm using it, mostly in the thought processes of two of the three main characters.

Mostly, I hate it because the story I've been telling in my head has been so beautiful that there's no way in hell I can ever live up to it. Not even the best writer in the world could do justice to the thing that's been living in my head.

I also hate it because I have no plan. Yes, 40k into it and it's as plotless as an episode of Gantz. (at least the last couple of them -- but that's another story.) I do have an ending in mind, but I don't know if it needs to or should change in light of the bathtub epiphany. Possibly that portion of it will resolve first, and then the ending I envision will happen in tact. I think that going plotless worked so well the first time I did NaNo because of the thrill of writing a story in that manner. I also started Shaman with a much clearer focus. Year two was rough because a certain character's rabid insistence that he be more than background material forced me to abandon pieces of the orginal idea. Rather than Nick and Kitsune double crossing one another, Ghostshadow went after both of them, which, given what he did to them, made the double cross seem silly. I shake my fist at Ghostshadow for many things. Last year I had too much of a plan and thus the massive mess that Seven Breaths turned out to be. But I didn't hate any of them. I hated Seven Breaths for a while, but I got over that quickly.

I think for me to be perfectly comfortable, I need my starting point, some idea of the end and a healthy amount of ideas for things in the middle. And I will need to write them down. I don't know if I will stick to the plan and do One Thousand Holes or not next year. It's entirely possible that I'll work on it before then, seeing as how I've already written the first section and two other chunks, only one of which I intend to use. Of course, I'm sure Muse will have a ton more material to throw at me before next November.

Maybe I don't hate my novel after all, but of my four tries, it's my ugly duckling. Will Pale turn into a beautiful swan when it grows up? Probably only if it can afford a lot of cosmetic surgery.

Label Me

I've long wondered what genre most of my work fits in. On occasion, it's blatently sci-fi or fantasy, but a lot of my other stuff seems, at least to me, to defy being labled. I was trolling through the Other Genres forum on NaNoWriMo to see what kinds of things were being lumped into the other category where I've put myself. Transgressive, post apocalyptic, slipstream, magical realism and so on. Most of them can and should be ignored. Post apocalyptic and magical realism I think are legit. The others, not so much. The magical realism thread also contained the briefest mention of urban fantasy. Suddenly, I feel as if my work has a home. Magical realism was close but not quite there. It really is more a matter of here's your every day world but (in the case of Pale), there's a real curse on the city, the characters have powers and all of this is accepted right along side everything else. Of course, that really only applies to Pale. It will apply to One Thousand Holes when I get around to that, but it doesn't apply to Texas, to name another to-be-written story. And I'm not sure if Once would be urban fantasy or straight up fantasy. It begins in a world that really has been untouched by time, where the old gods of the native people of this continent still exist. It's moving slowly towards a more modern world and will at some point dump the main character in modern day New York City. And just what is a trickster god going to make of such a place? I don't know. The story probably leans heavily towards urban fantasy. It seems a comfortable place for me.

In the article linked above, the writer mentions having never seen Neil Gaiman's American Gods shelved in the sci-fi/fantasy section of a bookstore. I've never seen it anywhere else. It's got to do with the author's name and how a majority of his work is perceived. It's sci-fi/fantasy stuff. But I'd agree that it's urban fantasy.

Interesting. But in the end, when everything I write is crap, does the genre matter? Shit by any other name would stink as much, to paraphrase a famous writer.

NaNoWriMo: an exercise in insanity, futility and faith

So National Novel Writing Month kicked off yesterday, and I'm hovering just under 4000 words after one day's worth of work. This after an excrutiating two hour visit to the orthodontist, which I'm still feeling a bit this morning, mostly in the form of tightness and pressure on my teeth rather than full on pain like it was yesterday.

This year is really no different than any other year I've done this except for the added bonus of being the ML and keeping tabs on the newbie I adopted. Honestly, neither task takes much time, but what they do is cause me to look at what I'm doing a bit differently. As an example to my regional WriMos and my newbie, who hails from the UK, I have to reach the 50k mark.

The story itself has expanded and shrunk and done all sorts of strange things I hadn't really thought of. Everything from pirates to a masked superhero to a relationship that wasn't intended to be *that* kind of relationship. But I don't mind at all. I knew what my beginning was. I knew some points in between. Now I have a sort of vague idea what the end is, and boy is it depressing. Appropriate but depressing. I just don't see another way out of it, and I really, really hate to do that to one character in particular, but hey, I don't plan these things. They evolve that way.

I don't really know why I do this or why I've continued to do this for four years. You would think that after one winning November, the novelty of it would wear off. That isn't what keeps me going back for more. I've learned something every year I've done this. This year will be no different. I don't know what the lesson is yet, but I'm ready for it.